Back in the mid-to-late 1980’s transgression was all the rage (in certain circles), and there was still a lot of material yet to transgress. It was in these days and in publications like Film Threat that stuff like Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromantik became the stuff of outré curiosity and urban legend.

When I finally got to see Nekromantik in the early 1990’s from a San Francisco video store with tons of bootleg VHS, it was still pretty fringe, though it had already begat a sequel.

It’s interesting, re-watching it so many years later. I don’t recall how comedic its tone was, maybe because that really pushed back on expectation? But this story of boy and girl and their sexual love for corpses, until boy loses job, then girl, then corpse, isn’t played completely straight-faced. Because the Nekro is the necro but the Romantik is played romantic like in soft-core porn or a shampoo commercial. Clearly intended for laughs.

And the finale, with sperm and blood ejaculating like an over-the-top geyser from a Saturday Night Live skit? That too is quite humorous.

It’s interesting, though, the playing backward of the skinning and killing of a rabbit does have some uncanny effect, as if violence can be undone and what is dead can be brought back somehow. The real gore, such as it is, like it or not, does have that aspect of reality that pushes the rest of the material a little further. The last scene is oddly affecting.

It’s gotta be said, Takashi Miike is outré there. Or at least he was at one point, for quite a while.

The iconolclasts of contemporary cinema are rather few and far between. Or otherwise maybe too obscure?

Gozu comes from Miike’s ripest period and seems to rank for many among his best movies. And that seems a fair assessment.

Absurd and comic, Gozu is the spiritual journey of a young yakuza flunky, Minami (Hideki Sone), and his crazy (really, really crazy) boss and best friend, Ozaki (Show Aikawa), who winds up dead and then disappears. Minami finds himself adrift in a very David Lynchian world, trying to figure out where his “brother” got off to. The journey is a prolonged and surreal, punctuated with strange and awkward humor.

If you think you know where this film is going,…well, let’s just say that the last half hour features twists that aren’t just unforeseen but gruesome and vivid.

Of all of Miike’s films I’ve seen, Gozu feels the most Lynchian. I’m not sure I’ve thought of David Lynch in his other works, but this one takes that vibe, runs with it, and then smacks down with some of Miike’s most intense stuff.

Al Adamson’s cinematic output is actually widely variant in qualities and constructs. One thing that they don’t vary in is that they are all sublimely BAD.

Levels of badness do vary though.

Brain of Blood is by some measures a more cohesive picture, one that Adamson shot in one go and doesn’t re-use a bunch of old elements. Production values look vaguely higher. But don’t worry, it’s bizarre and bad.

There’s quite a bit more gore in the way of a brain transplant, the movie’s raison d’être, is titular element.

Some mad scientists have a bit more intelligence and capability than others. With a surgical assistant (Angelo Rossitto) who can’t see over the edge of the operating table, you’ve got to imagine that staffing isn’t one of his strong points either. He’s not to worried about the quality of the bodies he’s willing to work with either.

I’ve seen comments comparing its style of humor, design, and aesthetics to some things on adult swim, and I can see that. It seems apt that George Clinton makes an appearance because there are perhaps antecedents to this surreal humor, comedy and craziness in the weirder ranges of popular culture.

The vignette-narratives are divided sometimes with broadcast snow which reckons a bit of Robot Chicken (or others) but doesn’t make as much contextual sense.

Some of the ideas and aesthetics are better than others. I’m not sure how intentional some of the cheesier CGI was.

Interesting and unusual, but still not quite remarkable, Stephanie Rothman’s The Velvet Vampire won’t probably change your life but is certainly worth seeing.

Celeste Yarnall is the titular (in more ways that one!) vampire, an ageless lady, mourning her long-dead love, who makes her home in the California desert. She invites a young couple to her home to spy on voyeuristically, to seduce, and eventually to feed upon.

Unfortunately, this couple are not just bad actors but quite annoying people. Which leaves our Velvet Vampire as the only interesting character in the film.

The desert setting, daylight excursions in a dune buggy, the dream sequences that could be Pink Floyd album covers all add flavor to this film.

Not exactly all over the place, Dream No Evil doesn’t exactly stay in one place either.

The stunning redhead Brooke Mills stars as the adult version of an orphaned girl who never gave up thinking her father would come back for her. Adopted into a family who runs a touring church, for whom she does nightly high-dives, she scours the country for an old man that could be her old man. And when she has a traumatic encounter with a pimp for the elderly, she drops off into a fantasy world.

Edmond O’Brien shows up as her long-lost Pa, though whether he’s real or not, you’ll have to decide for yourself.

While it’s mostly sort of lackluster, it’s also kind of compelling. Kind of.

The opening of Manhattan Baby gives fans a glimpse of what a Lucio Fulci Raiders of the Lost Ark might have been. But alas, it’s cut more from the Poltergeist and Exorcist cloth, and assembled in a patchwork far more patchwork than patterned.

It’s been written that this was the final collaboration between producer Fabrizio De Angelis and Fulci, a fraught collaboration, particularly here where the budget apparently tanked. Writers Elisa Livia Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti apparently had something more far out in mind and it seems that nobody was particularly happy with the results.

But it’s Fulci so it’s not a total wash. Disjointed and weird editing gives the film a pace full of weird disjunctures and there are some really nice shots and moments alongside some strange dialogue and weird moments of unintentional hilarity.

Curtis Harrington does the Southern Gothic by way of a drive-in movie theater in 1977’s Ruby. Piper Laurie plays the titular gal, a one-time crooner, now owner-operator of the aforementioned drive-in in the swamps of Florida. She’s a lush, haunted by her dead lover, though she also employs all of his former gang members who shot him to death. Does this make any sense?

Her daughter is teenage Leslie (played by the interesting-looking Janit Baldwin). She’s a mute and an oddball, and eventually the vessel for her dead father’s return and revenge.

It’s decidedly middling in quality, but somehow, something about it sort of transcends itself. No single quality stands out, though there are a lot of interesting touches like the drive-in lady of the night and the drive in itself. It’s set somewhere in the 1950’s when Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was all the rage (and plays out extensively through the film).

Ultimately it plays its Exorcist card, one that ends in a sentimental twist. Rather unusual.

Alfredo Zacarías’s Demonoid is moderate fun. Dull and not too compelling, it leads from Guanajuato, Mexico (and some cool real life mummies) to Las Vegas and beyond. Really, this is a “possessed hand” movie and is at its most entertaining when the hand is doing its thing, squishing faces and attacking people.

Samantha Eggar and Stuart Whitman try to keep plausibility alive, but outside of some decent moments and flashes, Demonoid only achieves mild levels of trash fun. Not utterly unworthy, not fully worthy either.